It might sound very obvious, but knowing who you are is the very first step into your SEO optimization plan. Before deciding what keywords you’re going to use in order to attract visitors and please search engines, ask yourself the following questions:

1) Where am I selling?

Probably the most important aspect of your online profile, localization is key generating the right kind of traffic. A restaurant ran in Legian, Bali, will not gain anything by attracting visitors looking for a good dinner in Paris, France.

Your product is available worldwide? You’re shipping from New York to Manila? Choosing your location as a keyword is still a good idea: local clients will appreciate the possibility to meet you directly.

During this tutorial, we will take Ubud, Bali as an example location.

2) What am I selling?

Look at this question in the eyes and forget everything you know about your product or service, except for what it does.Yes, this advice sounds like some kind of meditative exercise, an exercise which will put you in your customer’s shoes; your potential visitors will look for what your product does, what your product is, but, generally, not for its name.

Let’s say you are shipping, worldwide, a new brand of always sharp Japanese kitchen knives called “Wazablade”, what are the keywords best targeted toward your home-chefs rich market?

The answer is in the question: “Knives”, “Sharp”, “Kitchen”, will be the words used by visitors coming to your website via search engines.

Keyword list so far: “Knives, sharp, kitchen, ubud, bali”

3) What does it do?

In the case of a kitchen knife, you won’t need to look very far to answer this question… Or will you? Is your Wazablade for carving, slicing, paring, trimming or mincing? Is it a general purpose chef knife?

In this example, the Wazablade brand offers three variations, which are to be added to your keyword list: chef, paring and carving.

Internet users should then be able to access your site via queries containing, for instance, “Sharp paring knife” or “Chef kitchen knife”.

Whatever you’re selling is awesome. It has to be, in a need-fulfilling way, and because its strongest selling point is a spider bite short of a super-power.

Wazablade knives pride themselves on their own ‘super power’: a self-sharpening blade. But that is not all: now that your keyword list is good enough to attract the general knife-enthused public, you will need to expose more attributes catering to experts.

What is this question about? Why should you advertise the opposite of what you product is?

Well, most of the time, a product or service answers a problem, and Internet users will sometimes search using their problems as a query. What if you could bring them the answer right away?
Wazablade makes sure you don’t need to sharpen your knife? “Knife sharpening” is now joining the list.

We don’t all use the same words to look for the same things, it’s only natural to include synonyms in the list. At this point, most of the work is done, and you can start your keyword implementation. Check the next paragraph, though, to know what are the caveats to avoid.

Avoid the following practices:

Unrelated keywords

Many webmasters will add keywords just because it attracts visitors -only to see their site down-ranked by search engines.You might be tempted to add “ninja” or “Justin Bieber” to your list. Simply don’t.

Improbable keywords

You could go as far as including “razor sharp” in your list, but be careful not to overdo it. “Sharpestest” simply won’t be searched for, and “Zirconium dioxide” is way too technical to describe ceramic.

Best cheap free things

“Best”, “Cheap” and “Free” are overused keywords, generally used as a ‘bait and switch’ technique.
Only use them with they accurately reflect your content.

What next?

Using Google adwords to analyze the popularity and competitively of your chosen keywords is the next recommended step. Adwords tools are a great source of information and recommendations about keywords and their usage. Used in combination with Google trends and Google search related searches (at the bottom of their search result page), Adwords will help you pinpoint the keywords best suited for your content.